I’m making some eggplant curry sauce again today and thought I would get more into detail as to how to prepare the eggplant.

Eggplant is very watery, and if you don’t want your sauce to be, you need to somehow get the water out of the eggplant. Here’s a semi easy way that I found online on how to do so:

Coat cookie sheet with non-stick spray (I used Pam olive oil spray)

Wash and slice eggplant into about 3/4″ slices (pictured here is two small eggplants)

Arrange on cookie sheet and sprinkle a good amount of salt onto the slices. (the salt is what draws the water out and don’t worry about too much salt, it gets drained)

Let the slices sit for at least a half an hour. You’ll notice water forming at the top.

In the meantime, preheat oven to 350.

After half hour, gently squeeze excess water from the slices, taking care not to squish the eggplant. Dab slices with paper towel to get rid of excess water and salt.

Baste the slices with a mixture of olive oil and basil.

Sprinkle a generous amount of curry powder on each slice.

Bake for about a half an hour, until golden brown on top.

Let cool for a few minutes to let the eggplant settle a little.

I will be blending these up to make my sauce for dinner tonight, though you can skip the whole making sauce and just eat them as is! One of these days I’m going to get brave enough to attempt some breaded eggplant, but today is not one of those days.

As always, nutritious, delicious and of course, ANIMAL FREE! Enjoy!

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Want an alternative to peanut butter? Try sunflower seed butter! That’s right, SUNFLOWER SEED BUTTER! Not only will you save some money , but you can spice it up how you like. Because this was my first try at making my own, I kept it simple:

I put both containers of the seeds into the blender, with a couple tablespoons of coconut oil, and a couple sprinkles of cinnamon. I blended them on high speed, for about 10 minutes, with a few minute break to let the blender cool down a bit. You’ll find that the blender will get a little heated, so just give it a little break when it does. When it was finished, it fit perfectly back into one of the container! Enjoy it on anything you would enjoy peanut butter on! Nutricious, delicious, and animal free!

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Apologies for no posts lately, life happens sometimes. I have been creating new vegan”experiments” in the kitchen lately, which is very entertaining at times. I say experiment, because I feel like a mad scientist trying to come up with new formulas for me and my baby girl to eat.

One thing that we are very fond of in our new vegan diet, are smoothies. We have them every day. I like to make them the night before and let them chill in the fridge to enjoy for breakfast. I have noticed something about my banana smoothies: when left overnight in the fridge, it becomes the consistency of pudding.

As I was pouring my breakfast banana smoothie yesterday (more like plopping it, I had to add more soy milk to it) I was thinking that I may have accidentally found a way to make vegan pudding. Then I thought, “Hmmm….I wonder how this deliciousness would fare in a bread?” I set to it later on in the afternoon.

I was pleasantly surprised at the results, and now have a keeper for banana bread in my recipe book. It was easy to make, and came out moist and delicious!

For starters, you need your smoothie mix. I blended 2 bananas and about 4 cups of soy milk and set in fridge over night. I also had added a bit of ground ginger and some cinnamon to the mix.

To make the bread:

2 cups of smoothie mix

2 cups of flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp baking soda

spices: nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice to taste (to be honest, I never measure stuff like that, it’s all trial and error at this point)

Mix the dry ingredients, and then mix in the smoothie mix. Put mix in greased bread pan (I use olive oil to grease, and used a smaller bread pan) and bake in preheated oven for an hour. Cool in pan for ten minutes, then put on a plate to finish cooling.

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1 Acorn squash, chopped into small pieces (all but the skin is used)
2 cups of fresh baby carrots, cut into small pieces
2 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp celery seed
2 tbsp ground flaxseed
Blend squash and baby carrots in blender with about a cup of water until smooth .

Put into crockpot with a cup of frozen peas. Mix in cup of water, curry powder, celery seed and ground flaxseed and cook on high for 6 hours. Serve over favorite pasta (we used shells) and ENJOY! Nutritious, delicious and animal free!

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It’s our ritual every morning for me to crush up BG’s daily vitamin and mix it in some applesauce for her. Yesterday, I decided to try my hand at some homemade applesauce in my crockpot, which was really easy to make (I find most things are easy to make in a crockpot!)

Here’s what you’ll need:

6-7 apples, cored, peeled and cut into small chunks
about 12 oz. of sweet cider (I used Blossoms sweet cider from Tops)
3 tbsp. of sugar
generous amount of cinnamon
not so generous amount of Allspice

Mix ingredients into crockpot. While I am a big fan of cinnamon and generous with it, you don’t want to put too much Allspice-it is quite powerful of a spice and you don’t want to overpower the taste of the apples. I did just a couple sprinkles of it. Cook on low heat for 8 hours and cool. BAM! Applesauce! Nutritious, delicious and animal free!

Preheat oven to 350. Grease (I used olive oil) and flour a bread pan. Mix the ingredients (there are two separate packets in the square mix, toss them right in together!) Bake for about 80 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes then transfer to a plate to finish cooling. Enjoy! It’s like pumpkin pie, but in a bread!

Pre-boil carrots and potatoes for about 25 minutes. Add carrots and potatoes, to crockpot with all other ingredients except baby spinach. Cook on high for 4 hours. Put spinach in during last half hour of cooking. Serve over white rice and voila! A hearty, healthy, and filling vegan meal. (It was delicious, by the way, and I am STUFFED! I plan to use the leftovers on some type of pasta tomorrow.)